Gregarious goats gather in the garden

It is not so much a garden as a yard. & they do not so much gather as elude. But because they will take every opportunity to eat my ornamentals, I have become more selective about what I grow, even in the livestock-free zones.

I learned this lesson the hard way when our first two goats got into the front yard & made a snack of the azaleas. Our vet could either see them after he had finished his in-clinic shift in several hours or I could bring them to him. Bring them I did. Two nubian goats in the backseat of a Toyota Camry (A had the truck on campus & a switch was just not possible).

When goats vomit, they turn their heads at a 90 degree angle to their bodies & shake them vigoursly from side-to-side (which is effectively up&down in this position). I never did get all that nasty yellow foam out of the ceiling of my Camry & I am sure it is still there today. Fortunately this car had power windows so I could easily roll the back windows down enough so they could stick their heads out & then up again to trap them outside (without endangering them I promise).

I do still grow the original azaleas, but I dig up their babies & give them away. Ditto most of the sagos. Those that stay are well away from any accessible fence-opening ('gate' being a fluid term for a goat). Newly planted ornamentals are of edible varieties: ginger, mostly; aloe & prickly pear, edible even as they are unpalatable; sunflowers while they lasted; banana; etc.

Getting goats out of the yard is tricky. They are herd animals & most of them want to be where the others are; lead one out & most will follow. The exception is our grande dame Cinnamon Girl. She does not mind being alone in the yard, the better to eat it all herself. But she does mind getting wet.

Goats in general abhor getting wet. I have seen them fight with a horse who would kill them with one blow rather than leave a stall & go out into the rain, or even a light mist. Feeding on rainy days can be challenging, as the goats must be removed before I can put feed in the buckets & lure the horses in.

To get Cinnamon Girl out of the yard, we turn the hose on her & drive her around the yard until she gives up & goes back through a gate. Getting goats out of a stall is more of a wrestling match. & once out, they cling to the wall, trying to keep all of themselves under the slight overhang that protects them from that horrible, horrible water-from-the-sky. This makes it hard for me to walk this path keeping the feed in the buckets dry.

But nothing would induce me to live without Cinnamon Girl (although I know Mother Nature will intervene eventually). She is a gentle animal with sweet grassy breathe, who likes to rest her head on me, her chin pointing towards mine. & best of all, when I call her she runs to me looking like nothing so much as a maroinette, all ears & strangely jointed limbs, flying flying.

Please, please go away

The door-to-door G*d salespeople have been out in force. They exhaust me. First of all, we have way too many inside dogs (who do not always use their inside voices), for anyone expecting conversation to knock on my door & then hang around. "Deafening" does not really cover it.

& when I said knock I meant knock. The doorbell died years ago & it took us a long, long time to notice. That is how much I want to talk to someone who does not know better than to come to the front door.

The truth is I KNOW when someone is there because I can hear all that barking, too. You don't have to bang on the door, lean on your car horn, shout loudly over THE BARKING DOGS. The barking dogs are the clue to your presence.

It is always possible I am not there to hear the dogs, in which case banging on the door, honking your horn & shouting almost certainly will not work. If I cannot hear the dogs, I cannot hear you.

But there have been stalwarts who insist on waiting & waiting & waiting until the noise of the dogs is more than I can handle & I answer the door. These people always want to talk about Jesus. Funnily enough, no one tries that hard to deliver a package or the word of Muhammad (or Abraham or Isaac or Jacob for that matter). It is always Jesus.

After years of my saying "no thanks" & A saying more (any mythology outside of Sinbad movies holds no interest for him; I once had to explain to my book club that he thinks there is just the narrowest of gaps between people who go to church on Easter to humor their mothers & snake handlers), the door-to-door G*d salespeople stopped dropping by.

True story about A: he was stopped on campus & asked if he would accept a copy of the New Testament. He said no & then asked if the solicitor would like a copy of The Origin of the Species? He said no, too. Then A asked if he thought he should be illegally taking up a parking space that people pay $100s of dollars a year to use? That is stealing, right? One of the big Ten? Believe it or not, the guy packed up & left.

But I digress. I was saying the door-to-door G*d people are back. Some time ago, the pastureland across the street was earmarked for luxury homes. Four swanky models went up, the swankiest directly across from our driveway & listed for up to 1.4 million. We laughed our asses off. Until someone bought it.

Who would buy a 1.4 million dollar luxury entertainment-style house in the middle of nowhere? Why the pastor/deacon/whatever of a large new-testament-is-truth, we-go-to-heaven-faster-if-we-convert-more-infidels style church. Apparently, Jesus wants you to have the coolest pool party in the neighborhood.

& then they were back. Every week or so, a pair of little old ladies would stand on our front step, waiting to be torn apart by mad dogs. & this is how the conversations would go:

"Good morning"
"WHAT?""
"Have you heard the word?"
"WHAT?"
"The word of G*d?"
"WHAT?"

At least I think that is how it went. I really could not hear much over all that barking. I would toy with the idea of letting the dogs escape, but I do not want to get charged with assault or my dogs destroyed (although if you are standing on my front step, trying to talk to me about Jesus & my dog attacks you, isn't that a Sign?).

Seeing as how I got e-mails for the entry about saints & shoveling horse-sh*t, I am sure to get e-mails about this. In my defense, at least I am not standing on your doorstep reciting this to you.

Survival of the cricketest

There is a cricket in my bathroom. I do not know how it got in, but we live on a farm; bugs get in. He sang on& off most of the night. When I go in & turn on the light, he gets quiet. I say he because he is; so far as I know female crickets keep quiet.

In Waiting for Aphrodite, Sue Hubell writes about a species of cricket that got cut off from their fellows . By a glacier, if I recall. It has been a while since I read the book or since a glacier came through the Ozarks. I do not think there will be a my-bathroom version of the camel cricket. Not just because the bathroom is not a hospitable environment for cricket evolution, but mostly because there is almost certainly no lady cricket or he would not still be making such a racket. As I told A this morning "that cricket really needs to get laid".

Ordinarily, I find the sound of crickets soothing. I do not mind the cicadas, the tree frogs or even the sounds the gators make (actual alligators, I mean; football fans I could live without). But this cricket is a bit loud, although that might be because he is lost. One of the calls crickets make is to establish territories & define them for other male crickets. It seems in the absence of any other cricket territories, the lone cricket has no territory either.

Chicken picken

Everyone-of-a-certain age remembers the day the Sears Holiday Catalog arrived. Page after page of not-ever-gonna-happen wardrobe fantasies (I was always partial to the majorette costume myself).

We have that here, too: the day the hatchery catalog arrives!

It would be impossible to imagine how excited I am. This catalog will be my constant companion through mid-January (when I will place my order).

On Monday, Linda returned my chicken tractor so I can plan on more peeps than ever before! Oh Joy!

Shine on, you crazy carbon

When we met, A was finishing up a PhD. I do not know much about his thesis. I do know about the equipment he used to do his research, at least I know what it was called: a diamond anvil cell. It was years before the diamond part of this registered.

Later, when we went shopping for my engagement ring, I began to have a clue. I had seen his electronics shopping technique. He rifled through the NY papers (we lived further north in those days), or the Bergen County Register to find advertised prices lower than was available at the Wiz, a Circuit City/Best Buy type warehouse that would not be beat price-wise (I swear the radio ads screamed "Nobody beats the Wiz") & would give you the difference +10% if you could find it lower elsewhere. As a rule, he made a profit on birthday & holiday gifts (which is how some family&friends have come to say "A beats the Wiz").

But our marathon march through the diamond district was like nothing I had been through before.

I had few but specific requirements in an engagement ring. I have small, strong, broad hands & a large ring would only emphasize their lack of elegance. Even when I still had an office job, I worked with my hands. The summer we shopped, I grew my first tomatoes on the balcony of our New Jersey apartment overlooking the parking lot. I knit for years before I ever met A. I needed a cut & setting that would not catch, or worse cut, long fragile fibers, & that would be easy to clean. I did not want a ring I could not wear while living my life. & for whatever reason, I wanted a diamond solitaire. Which diamond was immaterial to me.

A delivered. He tortured jewelers throughout NYC. They would turn to me for relief: what did the young lady want? Something sparkley. & not to have to think too much (this along with being able to spend the entire day in jammies remains my lifetime . Also I would like to keep as many of my teeth as possible). I was useless to them & happy to hand the whole decision off.

The following year, my mother & I attended a knitting conference & the story of my ring (& it's knitting friendly design) made the rounds. I learned how rare true happiness is with this particular piece of jewelry. My aunt had the stone from her ring made into a ring for her husband; it caught on everything, including her children's skin & spent most of it's life in a box in her dresser. At least two close friends have confided they actually dislike their engagement ring. One from day one but "there was no way I was giving it back" & the other after the stone fell out of fashion. I still love my ring, I still wear my ring (but not I admit when shoveling out the horse stalls).

This past spring I decided the time had come to acquire a pair of grown-up formal earrings. The traditional standby of gold knots had become too young & frankly too conservative for those few occasions when I do 'dress-up'. Diamonds again.

A looked himself & then brought me in for the final consult: I really am a pain the ass when it comes to this not-thinking thing. Also, I have the attention span a site hound, any motion out of the corner of my eye & I am OFF. I am delighted with the earring he bought me.

I will never ever have a chair at 'the big rock table', but this lucky chance of a diamond expert in the house means my little rocks are quality.