On the street where I live

Meta: here are all the posts I’ve begun and have had to end abruptly. Sorry for the incoherent format. Wait, no I’m not; it’s a blog.

I think this time of year is why people live in Texas, because it’s chilly at night and nice and warm in the afternoon, sort of like a mild spring day in the Midwest. There’s been rain so the creek’s been running. Even though the road up Blue Hill is twisty-turny and has had huge ruts in it – not anymore, the grader has come and smoothed it out, here’s a picture of last year’s flood crossing.

Here’s a picture of the view above Monsieur’s car.

It’s really beautiful here; here are some flowers which bloom in November.

Ranching, a bit of oil, and cotton are where the money is here, because it’s so dry but when those rains come this winter we should be ready. Skip the Gay Rancher says it’s likely to be a wet winter.

Wet winters can be good, if the rain and other wet come all spread out, instead of all at once. Any rancher will tell you that he’s really just a grass farmer, and the ones up here are wary of feedlot ranching. They like to feed them on grass and some clover and hard feed. Their poop goes right back into the food chain, and they, in a sense, eat it the next spring.

Monsieur, like most land owners out here, leases a bit of his small acreage out to cattle and other stock grazing. It’s very good for the land, especially if the stock is rotated out with alfalfa.

Those trees you see in this picture are called cedar trees. They’re not like the cedars you see up in the American Northwest; they’re not much good for anything except fence posts, mulch and firewood. Thousands of years ago most of them would have been trampled or eaten by herds of bison before they had ever gotten much higher than your knees. Cattle don’t eat cedar saplings though. They do fertilize them, and the rest of our back yard.

The main reason I haven’t posted in so long is that I didn’t want to turn this into a mommy (or stepmommy) blog.

I've been getting immersed in teaching and childcare over the last month. Middlest Boy at 5½ is turning into this whiny, negative little poop. It’s hard for him, because his older brother tends to get all the attention (mostly negative, for things like throwing tantrums – and rocking chairs).

I’m trying like crazy also to get a couple more kids to get their multiplication tables memorized. I think it’s just one of those things that they’re going to have trouble with.

But this isn’t a teacher blog either.

So, I’ll go on about my love life, which is really extraordinary. OK, to me, anyway.

Extraordinary is such a Monsieur sort of word; it’s something he would say.

Monsieur is a really extraordinary daddy. He’s also an extraordinary musician, well a performer anyway. I’ve known better guitar players but he tends to look at songs like I look at scenes and you don’t go for technical perfection in diction or virtuosity, you go for the feeling – which is why he complimented Maggie so well on stage.

I didn’t do very well while Monsieur was gone. I don’t mean with the kids; I expected one of them to act out in some way because Daddy was out. I didn’t expect a rocking chair to come sailing at me, though.

This tree is a reminder that it is just turning fall here in Texas, where we are still here and doing very well. I will try to post a bit more soon.